


An Atlas of the Difficult World

by wildhartofthewest



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, and the force, but there will also be a healthy side dish of the child in training, only we're not gonna call it that you know what i'm saying, soft din is the best din, there will be lots of pining, there will be smut, this fic is for everyone who thought star wars needed 100 percent more witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 5,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22370350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildhartofthewest/pseuds/wildhartofthewest
Summary: It rains the day the ship falls out of the sky.| Din x witch!Reader. |
Relationships: Mando/reader, din/reader
Comments: 30
Kudos: 221





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i have not written fic in a literal million years, but then a handsome mandalorian came along and ruined my life. this is one of those tried-and-true mando-needs-help-and-you-the-reader-oh-so-conveniently-provides-it stories, but there is RAIN, and WITCHCRAFT, and INCOMPLETE SENTENCES, and it will be horribly self-indulgent. i’m very nearly certain it is the kind of thing no one but me would want to read, but if you do, hello. 
> 
> title is shamelessly stolen from the lovely poem by adrienne rich. 
> 
> (i’ll be posting short 300-500 word chapters, so i can put out a few a week. the first few are a little lite-on-the-din, but that will change. follow me on tumblr (wildhartofthewest) for endless mando thirst, and very ~*aesthetic*~ pictures of cabins. )

**An Atlas of the Difficult World**

_‘I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else  
left to read  
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.’_  
\- Adrienne Rich

i.

It rains the day the ship falls out of the sky.

It is a light rain, gone by mid-morning, but the humidity lingers long after. The moss tangled through the mis-wah trees is heavy, and branches creak beneath its weight. But, the rain takes the wind with it as it goes, and the day is so still that you watch the ship fall through a perfect reflection of the sky in a garden pool. 

The sky is covered by a layer of unbroken white clouds. Fire from the ship’s left engine is bright and obvious as a trail of blood in the snow. The smoke does not dissipate for several hours after the ship disappears into the wooded foothills due east of your cabin. It hangs heavy and still in the windless sky, not unlike the moss in the trees. 

The forest had woken as the ship passed. You can hear herds of wild sook yammering to each other across the valley. The birds had risen all at once, cutting frenzied paths through the smoke. Without realizing, you’d pressed a fist tightly against your breastbone. Last year, your weathervane had been struck by lightning while you’d been herding sook back into the barn, and your heart had felt the same way. Not like it was beating too fast, but like it had stopped altogether.

There are not many ships that come to Odettoa, and those that do usually land far to the south, where the Pilgrim’s Road begins. You do not move for a long while, watching the birds slowly lose interest in the pillar of smoke, and return to the trees, feathers marbled with ash. Your fingers are stiff when you finally release your hand.

It had been a gunship. Obvious enough from the silhouette. You scramble up the tallest tree on the property, and watch the faint glow where it must have made impact against the otherwise dark forest. The war had never touched Odettoa, but during the year before your duties began -- when your mothers had allowed you to leave this place for a single cycle -- you had more than once smelled hot metal and fuel smoke, cracked glass and the synthetic sharpness of blaster fire. 

A hundred of your mothers have protected this place, but until now, you have never truly understood what it needed protecting from. 

Your bare feet sink into the wet earth as you climb down to search for your rifle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a wild din has appeared.

ii.

Many years ago, when the mountains were tall enough to be dusted in snow even at the height of summer, people had come from throughout the galaxy to kneel at the edge of your spring, and drink. The spring water was clear, and smelled of mineral caves beneath the valley. It had cured minor ailments, dissolved parasites, helped with nervous dispositions, and your mothers’ themselves were well versed in herbal remedies and minor surgery. When pain or death were inescapable, they knew how to brew the mushroom tea that would help their patients face it without fear. 

You learned these secrets yourself when you were young, and it had always been the way of the mothers to offer help freely, without want for compensation. But, there had been plenty of nights when you were shushed out of the room while your mothers conferred with pilgrims that had come seeking something other than tonics or cures.

Some of these other arts, they had taught you too. You knew how to push an object without touching it, how to speak the language of birds, and how to dissolve clouds by whistling into the eastern wind. When you’d left Odettoa for one cycle, you’d witnessed both the extraordinary kindness and cruelty of the galaxy. That was when you first heard of the Jedi and their Force, and began to understand that your witch mothers were capable of more than calling up a storm or divining the future in the intestines of a slaughtered sook.

You knew this power would one day be yours, but that was before the fever took your mothers and sisters both. It was a sickness not even they could cure, and you were left alone with a spring, and cabin, too many mysteries, and the blaster rifle you now have pointed at the tree line. 

The sooks are agitated. There hadn’t been time to herd them back into the barn, and now they are grazing on the rapa roots in your garden, their blue fur shimming and damp. 

“Don’t come any closer,” you call into the trees. “I’m armed.”

The branches shake, dropping silver strands of water.

The blaster feels cool and firm against your shoulder. It smells of sanitized metal. You can shoot well enough, and there is plenty in the forest that will come to the aid of a witch-daughter in danger, but you have no idea how many were aboard that gunship. You close your left eye. You keep the rifle’s sight locked on the place where a twig has just snapped. Your heart has started up again, but you know the sensation is only temporary. At any moment, it could feel like a jumper who hits mid-air and floats away before he can return to ground. 

It is not a raider that eventually tumbles out of the bush, but a man – possibly a man – in a suit of armor that gleams silver, despite the layer of eroded red earth he’s dragged down from the foothills. He catches himself on the ruins of an old fence post, moving like he’s under the pull of some mad puppeteer. 

Despite your sudden panic, you begin the same automatic assessment you give any pilgrim that travels the now-overgrown road to see you. He cannot put weight on his left leg. There is blood mixed in with the mountain dirt. There is a rifle strapped to his back, but his attention is fixed on a linen bundle pressed against his chest plate. 

“Not one step closer,” you say, although you know you cannot turn away a pilgrim, even when they are masked, even when they fall out of the sky in a warship, even when they do not know they are a pilgrim themselves.

The mothers must always offer help, without want for compensation.


	3. Chapter 3

iii.

_Mothers, please, help me_ , you think, when the man finally collapses and bundle unfurls from his arms, revealing a small green creature with enormous ears. 

The birds begin another screaming chorus, but this time, none of them leave the low branches surrounding your cabin. The birds that live in the mis-wah trees are scavengers. They know the scent of blood. They know when to wait.

 _The spring is there for those who need it_ , your mothers whisper through the chambers of your heart. 

You take a step forward, but do not lower your rifle. Last night, you’d watched a meteor tear across the sky in a flash of mint green, predicting the exact trajectory of the gunship. This spring’s weather has been particularly mean, and storms have churned up the foothills, causing landslides that sweep away entire herds of wild sook. When the dust finally clears, it reveals animal carcasses in every stage of decomposition. Bad omens, everywhere. 

“You crashed,” you say, and the words feel thick and dumb in your mouth. It’s been weeks since you’ve spoken to anyone but the three tamed sooks in your garden. Before that, it was the town shopkeep, who only said enough to sell you game meat and moonshine. Long ago, the townspeople feared and loved your mothers, but now they only fear you.

“Yes,” breathes the man beneath his helmet. He’d been so still a moment ago that you hadn’t entirely expected him to answer. “Need bacta-spray for the little one. Have credits.”

 _Help must always be offered_ , your mothers whisper, but this time, it sounds as if they are laughing at you. You curl your naked toes into the mud. The man’s breath is rattling with pain, and the bundle – the child – does not look as if it could fight off a single bird, should one of them grow bold enough.

“Leave your blaster there, by the boulders. I don’t have bacta-spray, but a bonewort ointment works just as well. Maybe better. I can bring it to you.”

When your mothers were still here, you were afraid of nothing. But, now that they have gone, so have their wards, and you are not ready to test your magic against rifle fire. The birds have kicked pollen out of the flowering trees, and it drifts down upon you both like golden rain.

The man does not immediately react, but you can see his gloved fingers twitching by the sheath of a hunting knife strapped against his thigh. His mind works, and turns, and relents: one woman, one rifle, a crumbling cabin and three malnourished sook. He moves stiffly, propping his weapon against the rocks. 

Good, you think. He must not know that you are witch.

“Stay there,” you say. “I’ll bring the medicine.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.”
> 
> ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

iv.

You return with a wooden bowl filled by bonewort paste that smells of cooking fat and fertilizer. The man’s rifle is still propped where you’d last seen it, but he has moved. You find him slumped against the boulder with his elbows on his knees. It’s fascinating armor, you think, radiant beneath the patchwork of mud. It feels alive in the way the mis-wah trees are alive, despite their silence and their steadiness. Perhaps it has a magic of its own.

“Brought enough for both of you,” you say, kneeling to examine a wound on the child’s shoulder. It looks up as you approach, and its eyes remind you of the dark, rowdy creeks that climb out from your spring to explore the planet. It is a small cut, but deep enough to immediately tell you it will need stitches. 

“M’fine,” the man mutters. His voice is low and crackles through the modulator in his helmet. The wind has picked up, seeking to make up for its recent absence, and the reeds at the spring’s edge cast slender, crack-like shadows on his cuirass. “Just take care of him.”

“He’ll need stitches. I’ll take him back to my cabin, just there. Won’t be clean enough here,” you say. “And, you – you’re slurring your words. Concussion, I’d guess. I’ve got something that’ll help. Can you walk? I can carry the child.”

“Yes,” the man says, but after so long a pause that you know he does not believe it. You’re no mind reader, not like your greatmother Tova had been, but there is something painful and foul shedding off the man’s aura, strong enough to make your own stomach clench. 

“Never mind,” you say. “I’ll take the child and come back for you in a moment.”

The man raises a hand to protest, but says nothing else, perhaps realizing that compliance is in his best interest. For a moment, you watch your own reflection, distorted by the curve of his helmet. Seeing your own face without expecting it has made you feel upended – a tree after a storm. 

“I’ll be right back,” you say, but as you do, you wonder why you have any business reassuring an armed man who's dropped his gunship into _your_ forest. “I’m a healer. You had the bad luck to crash, but the good luck to crash here, so I suppose you’re doing all right. Vessa-vrai.” 

The child is warm and squirms in your arms.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”  
> ― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trying my best to post one chapter a day.

v.

“You’re a Mandalorian,” you tell the man, after you’ve managed to prop him against your shoulder and begin the slow waddle towards your cabin. Your sook have eaten through half the harvest of rapa root and flee as you approach, shaking pollen from their massive heads. Their grazing has unearthed bright yellow worms that shrink in the sunlight. 

“It took me a moment to recognize your armor.”

“You’ve met one of us before,” he says without inflection, and you can hear the rumble of his voice through the chest plate -- thunder rattling gravel at the mountaintop.

“No, but I spent time at the galactic library on Ossus. What the rebels could salvage of it, anyway. And, I buy holobooks from the traders sometimes. I thought there had been a Purge, during the war, and your people were –“

“Still a few of us left,” he gasps as you set him against the exterior wall of the cabin. The front door swells in the rain, and gets stuck either opened or closed, as if it cannot decide whether to lock you out or imprison you. 

Your cabin is too warm. You help the man settle into an armchair – the one with mushrooms you'd embroidered into the upholstery -- and begin searching the cabinets for a satchel of kimti. It has been a few weeks since you have needed to open the herb stores, and their scent explodes into the cabin, like a spring valley after the long dormancy of winter. Crisp, astringent, and sweet. 

“I understand,” you say. You have the sense that neither of you are particular conversationalists, but if he has a concussion, you must keep him talking. “I had a clan, once. Mothers and sisters, but a fever took them, and now I am the only one left. Vessa-vrai.”

“Vessa--?” he begins, but you can tell he is searching for the child’s linen bundle. 

“He’s fine. On my bed, letting the bonewort disinfect the wound before I can stitch it. Vessa-vrai. It’s difficult to translate. It means the song of the forest. The sook eat the grass, and the marshwolves eat the sook, and the worms eat the marshwolves. The interconnectedness of all things.”

You push the satchel into his hands, and continue before he can respond.

“You’ll want to sleep, but you musn’t. There is a private room, just there, where you can remove your helmet. Open the satchel and inhale the vapors, anytime you feel yourself beginning to drift off. I’ll come fetch you once I’ve bandaged the child’s wound.”


	6. Chapter 6

vi.

The child squirms and hisses beneath your touch, but it does not cry, and -- unlike many of the adults you have done this to -- it does not try to wriggle away from your needle. If anything, it seems to know you are trying to help. You were always good with a stitch.

In another life, you’d embroidered marshwolves and wildflowers into mother Tova’s robes. When she’d moved in the evening lamplight, it looked like your thread garden was swaying in the fabric. You make quick work of closing the wound.

The rain has started up again. The old cabin leaks and whines, and the sook bleat fruitlessly at the barn door, wanting to be let in. The occasional hailstone dings against the rooftop, causing the glass vials in your cabin to rattle as if the contents are trying to escape.

“Who are you, little thing?” you mutter, as you wrap the wound with cotton gauze. “You’ve got some magic about you, that’s for sure. It tickles my nose, like pollen. Is that how you two survived the crash?”

The child does not answer.

You hadn’t truly understood the enormity of the galaxy until the year you’d left Odettoa. You nearly cried the first time your ship passed closely enough to a nebula to see luminous pinks and yellows dance against the endless sky. You knew it would take a million lifetimes to see enough to satisfy yourself, and so you explored the universe through the library at Ossus. But, you’ve never read about anything like this child.

It yawns and nestles into your pillow, and you understand that it is not afraid. Not of you, or the Mandalorian, or the marshwolf bones you’ve hung in your bedroom for protection. The wind squeezing through cracks in your wall make them rattle against one another. Sometimes, at night, you dream the bones are trying to re-assemble themselves into the creature that killed your fourth sook.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”  
> ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

vii.

The door to your spare room is closed, but you know it is not locked. There had been no locks in this cabin, nor any of the bunkhouses that once stood on the property. Your mothers believed locks didn’t let the magic flow. 

“Sir?” you say, once again disappointed by your instinctual politeness. The rifle is still strapped to your back, digging its angles into your spine.

“Give me a moment,” you hear him say, and you do. After a few seconds, the door swings open just enough to let the glow from the oil lamps out. The room smells of kimti vapors, musky and sharp. It reminds you of the abandoned bird nests you find tucked into the mis-wah trees in summer, after the younglings have all moved on. Vessa-vrai.

“I’ve brought more bonewort, for your own wounds. Your child is fine. He’s sleeping now.”

A draft opens the door another fraction, and you see the man has put his helmet back on, but his chest plate is unlatched, revealing swathes of black fabric against his torso. The coming storm has turned the sky orange, and it shines through slits in the curtains, moving with the golden lamplight, like the entire room is on fire.

“Let me see him,” the man says.

“Of course,” you say, but can no longer suppress your curiousity. “Were you shot down?”

“No. Pulsar blast – caught us by surprise. Where is he?”

“Just here. Follow me. I’ve got to barn my sooks before the storm hits. I can fetch your weapon as well, so long as you promise you won’t use it to rob me. There’s a mechanic in town, fifteen clicks west of here, but the spring storms on Odettoa are dangerous. You won’t be able to travel the road once it comes. You can stay here overnight, if you like, but I’ll kill you, if you – if you try anything.”

The man’s helmet is as expressionless as ever, but you see his shoulders straighten. 

“I wouldn’t – I – I mean you no harm. We appreciate your help. I’ll repay you with credits, once I can get back to my ship.”

“I won’t accept compensation. That’s not our way,” you tell him, and cannot interpret the curious tilt of this helmet that follows.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been doing my best to update this every day, but i have some travel coming up, and it might slow to 2-3 chapters per week for the next month or so. thank you so much to everyone that has left comments so far. <3

viii.

The storm lasts for a full day.

And, then another. 

The air tastes of sea salt, carried from an ocean on the other side of the mountains. Water beats against the roof so heavily that you must shout on the occasions you do speak. Even the birds are too wet to fly, and you hear them stomping across the shingles, screaming hoarsely at the sky. 

“How long can this last?” the man -- ( _Mando,_ he’s told you to call him Mando) -- asks, after the first twenty hours. Two years ago, an eleven day storm had flooded the valley so profoundly that townspeople had rowed out in dinghy to make sure you hadn’t drowned. Your cabin had remained the center of a small island all spring. 

“Hopefully, not much longer.” 

There is little to do in the cabin but read, or rush outside to tend to the sook in the short moments there is a lull in the rain. You begin the laborious process of canning the bright orange berries that had been scattered across your kitchen counter the morning the ship crashed. Mando dutifully follows your orders – fetching vac-jars from the basement, stirring the boiling pectin – and when the canning is done, he takes it upon himself to find his own chores. 

When you return from the basement, he is sweeping discarded leaves off your kitchen floor, looking so out of place in his radiant armor that all you can do to stifle a laugh is clamp a hand over your mouth. The child watches happily from the countertop, berry pulp smeared across his mouth.

“Earning my keep,” Mando explains, but you know he must feel caged and restless. At times, you both find yourself lost in the grey shadows slipping down the windowsill. Fallen sticks accumulate in the garden, like the forest trying to reclaim its ancestral land. 

Sometimes, the two of you talk, but Mando’s responses are so vague and curt that you find yourself compelled to fill the silence. You tell him about your favorite mothers and sisters, and the fever, and the spring that would heal everyone but them. You tell him about the year you spent hitchhiking aboard trade ships from one spiral arm of the galaxy to another.

“Why do you stay here, then? When everyone else has gone?” he asks.

Distant thunder rolls over the mountains, and the child laughs with delight. 

“My mothers have always protected this place, and now I must too. Vessa-vrai,” you say.

“This is the way.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “At night I dream that you and I are two plants  
> that grew together, roots entwined,  
> and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,  
> since we are made of earth and rain.”
> 
> ― Pablo Neruda, Regalo de un Poeta

ix.

The rain does not stop.

Your garden turns into a great river of mud. From the window, you see the remaining rapa roots freed from their plot, drifting downhill. It has been three days, and the cabin is hot from the breath of multiple people in an enclosed space. You make soup from what vegetables you can salvage, and a handful of pale brown beans from stores in the basement. Mando disappears into the spare room to eat, while you and the child stare at each other through steam curling out of your bowls. 

You feel the Force – what your mother’s called _vrai_ – moving through you like the water outside, finding the path of least resistance. 

“You’re not his _real_ son, are you? Where did you come from?” you ask, although the wording of the question makes you uncomfortable the moment you say it. Your real parents had abandoned you on a forgotten boot path twenty clicks from here, and the mothers had become your family more than anyone in the galaxy who shared your blood. 

There is no answer, but you feel the child’s magic moving over your hair and skin. Two types of rain -- one outside, one in -- running down your cheekbones, behind your ears, through the gaps between your knuckles.

Oh!, you think. 

“Mother Tova’s scrying stones. You might like them.”

You fetch the stones from where you keep your most precious relics. Your mother Cya’s star-opal necklace. A book that gives the secret names of every animal and bird. A packet of dangerous seeds that could begin growing a forest that would not relent until it had overtaken every acre of a planet. 

There are two stones, each made of black obsidian and polished into a flat disc. You have not kept them dusted, but they still show a panoramic reflection of your ceiling and the child’s amicable face. You also see yourself, hair in braids, wearing the dress you’d embroidered with poisonous herbs in green thread, and a sook wool jacket that smells of dust and hormones. You turn the stones away, until your face has gone. 

“If my mothers needed to help someone who couldn’t speak, they used these. If there’s an image in your mind, you can project it onto the stones. Do you understand?”

The child laughs, and gestures towards a point of light travelling across the eastern wall.

“Yes, I _know_. There are plenty of ghosts here. Pay attention, now. The stone will work with hardly any magic at all. Just look into them and hold a picture in your mind.”

You blow out a candle that’s been melting down onto the kitchen counter. The smoke briefly forms the shape of a bird, wings spread wide as the child’s ears. Its smell conceals that of mold, blooming in the rafters. 

“Concentrate, now,” you say, but there’s no need. The child seems to know how to use the scrying stones without any instruction from you. He splays his short fingers down onto their smooth surface.

The image appears after a moment – a wet forest, not so different from your own. Small mushrooms growing out from a logjam. A root system so thick, the individual strands are indistinguishable from one another. Amphibians with pot-bellies, dragging their bodies through the mud.

“Is there where you come fr--,” you begin to ask, but you’re interrupted by the Mandalorian, emerging from the spare room with his empty bowl.

“What are you _doing_?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.”
> 
> ― Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

x.

“No,” you say, “I am no Jedi. My mothers would spit on the ground if they heard that word mentioned. Although, we do use the same Force, I suppose. We call it _vrai_ , which means the song. The Jedi believed that vrai could be good or bad, light or dark. We believe it is neither. A sook, or a storm, or a marshwolf -- they just _are_. The vicious things must exist to keep the song in harmony.”

Mando has his arms crossed skeptically over his chest. 

Rain patters against the roof, softer now, like it is trying to whisper something through the shingles. You wonder if the storm is finally passing, and feel an odd sadness. The storms can be horrible, they can be dangerous, but they are never quiet, and the sound of thunder has always sent an electrical thrill through your stomach. For a moment, the cabin had been comfortable -- with the smell of boiling roots, and the shuffle of Mando’s armor, and your breath fogging the windows until all that was visible of the outside world were the silhouettes of swaying trees. Vessa-vrai.

“But what are _those_?” he says, gesturing towards the scrying stones. 

The child holds his stubby arms up, but it takes an insistent wave before Mando finally reaches for him. Mando moves stiffly, and you realize that he is not afraid of touching the child, so much as he is of doing so in your presence. Perhaps, they have been alone for a long time. 

You have only gathered enough from Mando’s reluctant conversation to know they have been fleeing some danger. There have been flashes in your mind – a glowing black blade carving a path through silver metal – but you do not mention this aloud. Not when Mando seems so wary of your witchwork. 

The rain continues, and shadows free-fall through your kitchen in no particular pattern. You swallow. The muscles in your throat stiffen as you realize that you will miss this company, when it goes. You have also been alone for a long time. 

“They’re harmless -- just scrying stones. They show the image in a person’s mind. I didn’t mean any harm. I’ve just never met anyone like him before. I was curious.”

Mando’s head tilts. His left hand contracts into a half-fist. He always does this when he is thinking, you’ve noticed. You wonder if he realizes it. 

Perhaps you have spent too much time watching his forearms, and shoulders, and the way he taps his foot almost imperceptibly when he stares out the window. There must be lightning gathering its forces directly overhead. It feels like static at the base of your neck. You turn your gaze back to the stones, unsure of why your cheeks are suddenly warm. 

“What,” he says finally, “did you see?”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The land knows you, even when you are lost.”  
> ― Robin Wall Kimmerer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh, i've been slow, i'm sorry! i am very busy this month, and feeling a bit shy about posting my writing, but i promise to be quicker.

xi.

Mando stares at the scrying stones, and you watch his fingers gently tap against the countertop. If they make any sound, it is inaudible over the last raindrops falling out of shrinking clouds.

You hover close enough to Mando’s shoulder to notice that his armor has a smell. Not like skin or leather, but the atmosphere of someplace very cold, very isolated -- like wind skimming snow on the mountains, or a river clinking with rhinestones of ice. 

After a long moment, he leans back into the chair, and steeples his fingers over the stones. He takes the scent with him as he moves away, and you are struck with a sudden feeling that has no comparison, aside from the dull homesickness you’d experienced in your year away from Odettoa. 

“Do you know where it is?” he says. His voice has a grave, quiet tone you have not heard before. 

“No. There are a hundred billion planets in this galaxy. Enough with damp forests and frogs to keep you searching for a thousand lifetimes. But, maybe the librarians on Ossus can help,” you say. You do not know much about the universe, but you do know that there are few questions a librarian cannot help you answer, even when those librarians are the unsettling seven-armed reptiloids that staff the Galactic archives. 

“You can keep them,” you say, before Mando can respond. Until now, he has accepted your help with the quiet gratitude of any other pilgrim, but you can tell by the angle of his shoulders that he is uncertain what to say next. “They’re just trinkets, really. And, maybe they can lead you to his home.”

“What about _you_?” he asks, and it is not the question you expect. 

Before you can respond, the steady trickle of rain again becomes a downpour. The sook in your garden scream.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is." - Margaret Atwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, i'm slow again! who woulda thunk it!

xii.

Marshwolves have black eyes and black claws. They have slick black fur that reflects the forest around them so clearly many villagers have walked directly into the center of a pack before realizing they were surrounded. Some of these villagers escaped with wounds you’d stitched yourself. Most were only remembered through scraps of bloodied fabric draped over branches like prayer flags.

“Must be flooding downhill,” you mutter. 

From the back window, you’ve caught sight of four – _five_ – marshwolves crouched in the reeds surrounding the spring. The water reflects their bodies, and their fur reflects the water, and you must blink hard to keep your vision in focus. They are short, but robustly built, and their forelegs end in hands that would look human if not for the massive curved claws at the end of each finger. Their eyes are white and shining furiously through the veil of rain. 

“They wouldn’t come up this way, otherwise. They were always too afraid of my mothers. They’re desperate.”

You do not mention that there is nothing more dangerous on Odettoa than a desperate marshwolf, but the child gives a low hum and crouches in his stool, until only his ears are visible over the countertop. The howl of a predator must set off alarms embedded into every child in the galaxy. Vessa-vrai. 

The scrying stones have been pushed aside, but for an instant, you think you see a strange shadow pass over their surface. Dark skies. Imperial ships. Bright pink blaster fire. 

“Looks like your herd had enough sense to scatter into the forest. I’ll go run these beasts off. Couple of shots should scare them away,” Mando says. You watch him holding the curtains aside in your peripheral vision, and have no idea when he managed to unholster his rifle without you noticing.

“ _No_. You don’t understand. The marshwolves are small, but they are _smart_. Smarter than us, and they're hungry. Also –“

You hesitate. The wave of heavy rain makes you think that the wolves cannot see into your cabin, but what if they have noticed the curtains move?

“What?” Mando presses, but he sounds no more worried than he had a moment ago. Perhaps you have not fully expressed the urgency of the situation. 

“The marshwolves hate me. I killed one of their brothers.” 

Mando turns to face you, but his posture tells nothing of what he might be thinking. The direct attention makes you uncomfortable again, and in that moment, it feels like your body has forgotten its most basic patterns. Your eyes blink out of rhythm. Your fingers twitch against your dress.

“I won’t go far,” he says. “Just outside the door to blast a few rounds over their heads. Keep an eye on the child.”

“No,” you say again, knowing he won’t be dissuaded. He did not grow up on Odettoa, hearing the screams of wild sook, suddenly cut short. 

You reach out and lay your palm flat against the iron heart of his cuirass. Magic has always made you feel a little drunk, a little reckless, and the birds on your roof fall quiet as you let the power flow out your fingertips and into cool beskar. It is a peculiar sort of silence, a language onto its own -- not unlike the mis-wah trees sending signals to one another across the hills. For an instant, the golden glow of your protection sigils hover over silver like a second layer of armor. 

He cannot have seen it, but the child’s eyes reappear over the countertop. Mando is staring at your hand, right shoulder held slightly higher than his left. 

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“You shouldn’t go out there,” you say, although you know he won’t listen.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They always end up alone in the stories—witches, I mean—living in the woods or mountains or locked in towers. I suppose it would take a brave man to love a witch, and most men are cowards.” ― Alix E. Harrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm always slow, and i'm always sorry. tumblr : wildhartofthewest

xiii.

You watch Mando’s silhouette in the doorframe, and know that letting him go is a mistake, even with your sigils fortifying his armor. The duty of protecting the spring has always fallen on _you_ , by birthright and happenstance, and sometimes that fact has made you cry, and knock over glass vials, and drink the shopkeep’s moonshine until your tears tasted of liquor. But, that has done nothing at all to change the universe’s opinion. 

“He doesn’t understand,” you tell the child. The soft white fuzz on his head sways in the draft from Mando’s exit. Wind has stirred the soup cold, but the child’s eyes are fixed on the open door. You wonder if the rain will wash Mando’s blood off his armor before you can sneak out to collect his body. 

“Oh, when the coven was still here, the marshwolves wouldn’t dare –,” you begin. Your mothers had kept herbiaries and lunar almanacs, but in all your time with them you had never once seen a spell written down. Magic could not be translated into words, because it mostly involved _listening_. Real listening – to birds bringing gossip from the other end of the country, or the slosh of a lake foretelling the weather, or the whisper of a ghost that loves you. 

Right now, you hear the marshwolves howling. You hear Mando’s rifle, and the child’s shallow breaths. They are all saying the same thing.

_You are not the only witch here._ Make _a coven._

The child looks from the doorway to you. The fresh air has turned his inner ears violently pink. You think there is understanding in his eyes, but perhaps, he is only squinting because he’s grown used to the semi-darkness of the cabin. Mando has left the curtains opens, and the inconsistent light of the rainstorm washes over both.

“The marshwolves fear nothing but fire,” you say, slowly. “I’m not much of a weatherwitch, but if we can call down one good lightning strike together –“ 

The child blinks. There is another round of blaster shot, and you are so grateful to hear it that you unclench a fist you don’t remember having made. Mando is still alive, for now. 

You reach out. Not with your hands, but with your mind, and suddenly the entire world is humming. The living marshwolves in your yard, and the dead ones feeding trees with their bones. Distant humans huddled over campfires, singing songs about the witches and wolves in the forest, not knowing that the witches and wolves can hear them. And, the child –

_Oh,_ you think. _The child._

Every creature has its own note in the song, and the child’s is as impossibly, painfully loud as cymbals crashing right next to your ears. 

You will need to address this, later, but first there is the matter of monsters at your doorstep. You let your mind gently brush against the child’s, and _show_ him what you want to do.


End file.
